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Continuing Education At The Price of Sleep

So there has been a personal trend for me in my career over the past few weeks and I thought that it would be worth mentioning here. Many who follow personal finance have browsed through some of the major blogs and books that talk about a few themes that I strongly believe in:

1. Don't waste time. Time is a huge asset. Even people who do not have a job, they have something that is quite valuable: time. In short, even when unemployed, this is an opportunity to improve yourself and your skills. Put simply, whether or not you're working, it is really important to not waste time.

2. Remember your value. In short, the skills that you get in many jobs are skills that must be continually improved and refined. If you're not doing that, then you're setting yourself up to be in a bad place in the future when you're lagging behind your peers in the field.

For me, number two came home to roost this past year. I've been in my current position for some time and although I've been working hard, I have not been able to get any outside help and learn anything interesting to continue growing in my field. So, this means that I am going to be working behind the eight ball until I could fix it.

So, in order to fix it, I returned to some of my college texts and decided to review them. This sounds a bit corny, but I am one of the few people who actually went to school and ended up doing a job directly related to my degree. So that is pretty good I'd say. The reality is that things are not that outdated that my books that I already had (remember it is about being frugal when possible), were a bad starting point.

This served the goal of helping me get back into learning about my field and also serves the purpose of avoiding spending money until I am sure that I will commit. So, today I finished my first book and I am in the process of working on two others that were purchased. I expect that these will take longer since they are the first time though.

Now that I've gotten back into the habit, I am much happier. I feel like I am making some productive use out of my commute again and this makes me happy. The only cost appears to be the loss of some sleep :)

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